COUNTRY LIFE
THE shorn hayfield is still recovering from the passage of the rake and the reaper. The rain has soaked through into the ground and the clover leaves are helping to keep the area moist, so that soon an aftergrowth will spring up as green as rape or kale, but the partridge hen that hatched her brood in the shelter of the grass at the edge of the field has led the chicks away from the wet field. Until a week ago they fed in the hedgeside between the hayfield and the cornfield. At one corner the oats were thin-and short and they were able to search for insects, move about the crusty furrows and have shelter into which they could crouch and vanish as though they had been spirited away. The corn is down now. The almost barren corner has become naked. It had no lower growth of grass and the thirsty ground drinks up the rain and shows its stones as it dries out The partridge family have moved. They • are in the beet field now, where the leaves have kept the ground moist and the pickings are good. By the time the beet has been lifted they will all be bigger, stronger birds, experienced in the jungle and wise in the ways of their enemies, able to range the hillside and go whirring down across the meadow hedge. I hope to keep count of them.
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